Why Small Towns Are Sometimes Scary

In my sojurns today, I wound up in two small towns.  One of them was just more or less an empty blank.  This was the one closest to the main roads.  The other one, the one waaaay back in the woods, was actually frightening. 

Now this comes from someone who lives in a place that cannot be found on most maps.  I think even Google Maps will ask you, "What, are you SERIOUS?" when you enter the name of my town as your destination.  That being said, I don't think my humble hometown has quite the feel to it that the one I wound up in today does.

As I cruised through looking for a gas station, the creep factor started with streets full of elaborate and immaculately kept old homes.  This would not have been eerie except for the fact that they were sort of...out there in the middle of nowhere.  It was all trees, trees, trees, then, voila!  High Victoriana. Odd.  There was no transition.  It was just...Sudden History Village emerges from the underbrush.

I could have gotten over that, too, had not the middle of town been like something out of a Stephen King novel.  Everything was very well taken care of, draped with holiday bunting, painted, trimmed, cared for.....and empty.  As I cruised through, I kept waiting for the alien zombies to come out and stare at me, the interloper, for being on their turf. 

The third big reason it was scary was the gigantic closed mill that dominates the middle of town.  It was a mishmash of modern and very old architecture, and it even has its own historic marker.  Old factories always have that spooky atmosphere, anyway, and this thing just screams Halloween Nightmare.  If I were a teenager in that town, I would deliberately route all my driving as far away as I possibly could  from that building because it looks like every edifice in every horror movie ever made.  It absolutely looms.

I got gas at a station right down the street from Horror Mfg., Ltd., and got the hell out of that tiny back pocket of the woods.  Some time when I am in the right frame of mind, I might go back and see if the aliens got the stores filled up so their cover story is more convincing, but I don't really want to tip them off that I noticed.